2006 IR Vacation to Hell...The Rio Huallaga

El Rio Huallaga -- Day 5

First the video has been turned into Grace and the work has started on the film...check out the trailer. Watch Here 

Todd: Our little jungle camp, which was hastily chopped, hacked & beaten down on the only "flat" spot in that part of the canyon, made for my worst night of sleep on the trip. I was forced over into Bryan's zone in the tiny tent by a huge root & sloping piece of ground underneath me. He was unable to really move in any direction at all, & was pretty much spooning a boulder all night. We woke up at sunrise & I emerged from the tent kranky & dreading the task that lay ahead. The plan was for Piero & Drew to head out directly after eating to utilize Drew's ropes & belay skills & sort out a way off the knife ridge. The rest of us would break down camp & follow shortly behind.

Andrew:  Piero and I started up early after breakfast. We were following faint remnants of an old trail up the steep hillside.  The foliage was progressively opening up from jungle to pampas grass fields, which meant less to hold on to but more visibility and mobility.  Abruptly the trail stopped, where sometime in the past a landslide had ripped down a thousand vertical feet to the river.  We were essentially standing on a cornice of rocks, dirt, and bushes.  Up a little further it became a knife ridge, dropping steeply on both sides, and too steep to ascend further.

Bryan: My morning was a brutal encounter with the jungle. There had been ants all over everyone's gear the night before, so I began shaking out all my gear. Last item to clear was my helmet. There were what seemed like hundreds of red ants crawling inside it. I banged it out on a tree and cleared every last one. Or so I thought. I put the helmet on and then instantly was bitten several times on the neck and I had ants crawling all over me. Turns out they had infested the area between the liner in the shell.

Todd: Oh my god, I forgot about the ants! While Shane & I bickered back & forth about who was carrying how much water, there was this brief moment of comic relief .. at Bryan's expense, of course. His helmet was literally ALIVE with fierce biting red ants, all up under the foam in the helmet!

Bryan: ... yet another factor which was testing my tolerance of the situation we found ourselves in.

Shane:  I did alot of backcountry skiing this winter to help get in strong physical shape for this trip.  There was a certain irony hiking up some of the steep trails as I hit my stride climbing rather than paddling.  I normally don´t like hiking unless it´s for turns, and I wish I had a backpack and proper shoes, but as far as hiking goes, I found this to be quite pleasant.

(This is the quintessential downstream view & the reason why portaging seemed like an impossibility. In the foreground is the beginning of the pinch of the Great Bend where we were forced up & out. In the background, a sizeable bench exists, but this is at least as high off river level as where we stood,& from there, the canyon walls dropped vertically back down to the river. This continues for 20 to 30 km as the vegetation becomes more & more dense. Note the waterfalls in the distance.)

(Lead-in to the nasty rapid that forced us up & out .. as viewed from a thousand feet up with a 300mm lens.)

 Todd: I had already done the slog up to the knife ridge the night before & so I knew what to expect -- steep, exposed switchbacks on rotten soil with nothing but cactii & huge aloes to grab onto. But I did not expect to top out & find that Drew & Piero had already found a manageable way off the ridge in such a short amount of time.

Andrew: There was a forested valley down on one side, across which was another visible trail that appeared to switchback up into the sky. Given the steep nature of the terrain, and the lack of good footing in the tall grass I attempted to walk down into the forest on belay from Piero.  I managed to find a safe traverse route.

Bryan: It was a somewhat somber mood when we were all standing on the knife ridge. Drew had completed the traverse -- which was the crux of getting beyond what we thought might be impossible the day before -- and was continuing to scout the trail. Piero was on the sat phone calling his wife and brothers, trying to arrange some sort of help. We could see the boats way down in the distance, and we were all struggling with the bunches of gear strapped onto us with webbing. Not knowing how far, which direction, or any details of how we were going to get out was a humbling place to find myself in. It was surreal for me. Beautiful and scary all at the same time. The mood of the entire team shifted when we saw the guy running down the trail.

Todd: That was a huge moment. Talk about surreal! Seconds prior to seeing this dude, we were all convinced that we were a week out from seeing another human being. We had no idea if the trails we were looking at in the distance even led to anywhere we wanted to go. Distances & scale were skewed. Everything looked huge & impossible .. And then, out of nowhere, here's a guy running down through the trees on the trail we were trying to reach.

Bryan: Piero yelled at him and I think spooked him pretty good. He hid in the woods while Piero continued to yell "Hola Amigo!"  Eventually the guy shouted back and we found out that the trail we were on would take us to another trail and a village was 2 hours by foot.

Andrew: .. and in little time we were all happily hiking through the woods towards the trail. Morale was definitely improving. Within a half hour, we were on a small concrete flat area with a firewood cache! 

Todd: We traversed through the woods & ascended a gulley to the concrete pad, & as we did, I noticed more & more signs of human activity .. trampled vegetation, some banana peels & stuff like that. It was here that I began to feel more at ease with the situation, like we weren't in as desperate of shape as I'd thought. I knew we were a long way out & that no matter what, we had some difficult days ahead of us, but I no longer felt "lost".

Andrew: Then it was a grueling couple hours of climbing more switchbacks on the steep loose-gravel trail to the top, where we encountered a small farm and the main trail.

(Our first real sign of "civilization")

(Our morning hike, from above.  The landslide / knife ridge is visible in the lower-left.  It's bigger than it looks.)

 

Todd: Piero cautioned us that our Gringo-ness & brightly-colored gear might spook the campesinos, and so he said we should wait well away from the house while he went up to the farm to locate whoever lived there. The ultimate plan was to find some burros or horses to get us back to "town". While he was gone, we admired the surroundings & watched from afar the sporadic "traffic" along the trail.

(Our altimeter .. straight up!)

(More downstream canyon perspective .. Just to the left of Drew's shoulder you can see the canyon falls away almost past-vertically back to the river. To the right of Bryan's head, you can see the bench mentioned earlier. Where's the trail & where's the river level access? This is thousands of feet off the deck.)

 

(Same waterfalls as shown above, but from a higher vantage.)

Shane:  Once we got to the main trail, Andrew and I offered to go fill up all the MSR water bags we had brought, not knowing when the next water would be available. There was a natural spring not far away, and Andrew and I chilled out under these big shade trees pumping water for over an hour.  It was a pretty cool zone, and occasionally a local would walk by, shake our hand, say hello, take a drink and probably wonder what our crazy water filter was all about. 

Bryan: By this point in the mission we had all gotten to know Piero a lot better and his skills were proving to be absolutely essential. Without him we could have easily spent a day or more at the trail junction before making any further progress. He had chased some guy down on the trail and found out that there was a village if we went left, and also a guy named Julio who might have burros, if we went right. He managed to find Julio and bring him back to our piles of gear.

Todd: I was pretty wiped out at this point. We'd been climbing for hours, the sun was intense & there was very little shade where we were. I was out of water & really anticipating Shane & Drew's return from the spring. In the meantime, there was an increasing stream of foot traffic on the trail. All the while, Piero was going back & forth with this guy Julio & it seemed like he was having to work him pretty hard, or that Julio was being difficult.

Bryan: The culture of Peru was alive in their conversation. They fired comments back and forth, picked up pieces of gear, Julio said he wouldn't be able to do it, Piero assured him he could ... then next thing you know, Piero's got a shit-eatin' grin on his face and says for the first time "Let's keep it moving!", which became our mantra for the next 48 hours.

Shane: By the time we returned from the water mission back to the group, Piero had sorted out burros for us ... keepin' it movin'!

Todd: All that haggling & the price was something like 30 soles, which is only like ten dollars, for several animals & many hours of work!

Andrew:  ... only 30 soles, and after getting us to the road, Julio still had to turn around and hike the 4-hour return trip in the dark! We saw some Incredible scenery from the trail.  The part of the river we did run looked quite formidable from up top.

Bryan: The hike out along the trail was perhaps the most majestic moutain views I had ever seen in my life. Looking back up at what we paddled, it felt like a big accomplishment to be where we were. Huge rolling mountain landscapes appeared around every corner. I could tell that everyone was pondering the unknown of what was still downstream of where we had hiked out.

 

                                        (Upstream & Downstream Views of the Great Bend)
                  

 

 

 

(Looking upstream at the stuff we paddled)

(Closer view of one of the larger rapids from Day 3)

(the white strip of earth in the background of this photo is a huge landslide, & marks roughly where we finished our hike .. but at the time we didn't know we'd be going that far.)

(Another downstream view with our knife ridge / landslide in clear view on river-right.)

Todd: With so much time to just walk & think amidst scenery that was indescribeably beautiful (& exacerbated by fatigue, hunger & dehydration), several things occurred to me that day .. First, I realized that we were most likely some of the only gringos to have walked this trail & to have seen the things we were seeing. Affluent people from all over the world spend loads of money for similar experiences that are packaged as "adventures", but in reality are just guided walks on well-worn tourist trails with well-established "safety nets". And here we were accidental tourists in a part of the Andes that sees little to no outside interest, surrounded by massive peaks, peering down into an abysmal canyon that we had kayaked, and meeting & talking to people who were so friendly & curious about us & why we were there. I think we all realized that, even though we didn't make it to Tingo by water, we were super fortunate to be in that place at that moment! The next thing I realized was that the people living deep in the Huallaga are decidedly "poor" by our standards, but they are happy, proud people who are surrounded by their families & wake up every morning to a simple lifestyle supported by this beautiful & rugged land .. and that's not a bad way to live. You could hear it in their voices & see it in their faces. Next, I realized that, regarding us in that canyon, there were two different "realities": the first, our original reality, which was more or less "we are alone & unknown in this place, so far from civilization & rescue", was based on our limited knowlege of the Huallaga. It was an incomplete perspective gained from looking at maps & running rapids at the bottom of a very deep canyon. The second reality, which is what we later came to understand, was that there was in fact a very active, very vibrant network of human activity in the "backcountry" of the Huallaga -- many thousands of feet overhead, it was just a normal day in the life of the people in the canyon. Deep on the trail, we saw school kids carrying backpacks & soccer balls, old women on burros, packstrings carrying potatoes & bananas back to town. There were tiny farms with plots of arable land etched into the steep hillsides thousands and thousands of feet above the river & many miles from pavement  ......... I had already killed the last of my food & water on the hike out, & I think I was becoming delerious..

 

Bryan: Piero had to contantly stay with Julio and push him because he kept wanting to stop the burros and turn around so he could make it home by dark. Piero would not accept this and so we plowed forward towards the end of the trail and the promise of public transportation.

Todd: Near the end of the trail, we crossed the major trib that comes into the Huallaga on river-right at the beginning of the Great Bend. For the geology geeks out there, it was here that we came across a phenominal & impressive area of boulder deposition that fills the valley & extends as far as the eye can see upstream. The boulders were huge & from miles away, the whole thing looked like a massive glacier. I've never seen anything remotely like it anywhere. This explains the change in river character on the Huallaga once we reached the confluence.

(These photos do not capture the enormous scale of this valley & all the boulder debris. I wonder what the Google Earth layer looks like ..)

 

 

 

 

(We made it!  To a road that is ... Here we are waiting for the truck to show up.)

Todd: We crammed 7 people into that tiny Toyota pickup. On the front bench seat, there was a girl sitting half on the driver's lap & half on mine, plus Piero, who isn't small. And then we proceeded to stagger & lurch our way along mostly in first gear, on what was probably way sketchier than anything we had done in the previous week.

Andrew: After a 90-minute truck ride on a crazy mountain road, which was scarier in parts than the river, and had been put in (luckily for us) only 3 years ago, we ended up in a dirty little town called Chaglla, which had electricity but no pavement. None of us could believe that we made it out in a day. Having rarely encountered gringos there before, the locals were very interested in us.  Crowds of people stood outside (and some in) the restaurant where we ate dinner.  At the request of our waitress, a man who appeared to be the town photographer took our picture.  I have little doubt that we eventually ended up framed on their wall.  The next morning, we were only a 3-hour hired car ride back to Huanuco.

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John Grace & Penstock Productions are working on the video content & should have a finished product available this winter!

El Rio Huallaga - Day 4

Shane:  By this time in a multi-day trip, I love how teams start to really flow as everyone takes on certain team responsibilities.  I was in my morning ritual of filtering water near one of the many springs pouring into the river when I noticed that the entire river had turned an orange-ish-brown color -- apparently a side creek had flashed.  I quickly checked a few rocks in the river I had noticed as visual gauges and did not see much of a change in river level, but I was also not too excited about this new water clarity.  I packed up the filter and reported the news back to the team.  Up until now, everything in the trip had a real momentum building feeling, and this was the first red flag or negative sign we had seen ... a signal?

Todd: I spent a good part of the morning with a needle & dental floss, sewing up a couple holes I'd put in my skirt the day before. While I was doing this & Shane was making water, the rest of the crew was poring over the charts. We were all aware that we were in the middle of the so-called Great Bend at this point, and that the canyon was expected to seriously gorge up from here on out .. but we were also kind of attached to this notion that the actual river gradient would lessen a little. Well, not so, apparently, as reports were coming from the Navigation Department that in all actuality today would be the new "steepest day". Piero kept saying, "We're dropping into de cheet today boys!"  Hmmm, I thought we'd already done that yesterday! Then came Shane sounding the alarm on the desert-red water situation. Things just felt a little heavy that morning.

--->>> Click on photos for full-res in new pop-up window!

(Looking downstream from camp the evening before):

(Similar angle in the morning. Note our gauge stick at bottom left):

Andrew:  I'm not really sure why the water changed, but in any case it was a bad omen.  After 1/2 mile we got to a marginally runnable sievy rapid.  Beyond that it went under overhanging walls on both sides, with a huge boulder chocked in the middle 30 feet up.  We studied the map and saw that we were in a small canyon before the big serious one which would go on for over 20km.

(The lead-in to the nasty ..):

(The nasty ..):

(Drew & Piero checking out the tunnel formed by the folded-in gorge & chockstone):

Bryan:  When we got to the chockstone rock what immediately overtook me was the river left wall.  On the topo map this thing went up from the river close to 2000 meters.  In person it was not much different.  There were a few benches in that 2000 meters...seperated by cliffs thousands of feet high.  The most intense canyon wall I have ever seen.  Todd and I pretty quickly volunteered to hike up river right and check out the canyon immediately below the chockstone to help make decisions on how to proceed with the river.  One thing was very clear...the canyon was closing in on us quickly and the river was taking way more time to deal with.  After a 200 foot climb up a bunch of loose limestone, we traversed into a heavily vined bench.  While this vegetation was not prickly like the BC hellfuck, I've never been so entangled in vines.  We eventually made our way to the edge of the canyon rim and could see down in from several hundred feet above.  From what Todd and I could see the canyon looked runnable with a questionable rapid at the end that caved out on both left and right walls.

(The hellish vines that would tangle around anything & everything.)

Todd: We had only paddled a tiny distance before having to get out at this awesome gorge. I volunteered with Bryan to do what promised to be a heinous scout in part because I needed to metablolize out the antihistamines I took before bed -- I was groggy as hell & a steep sweaty slog through the jungle would get the heart pumping. Bryan & I took forever scouting. The scramble up to just downstream of the chockstone was only half of the mission. As Bryan mentioned, the gorge immediately below the unrunnable rapid looked good-to-go. We could easily portage the sieved-out boulder mess on river-right & drop in under the chockstone. On belay looking straight down into the gorge, it appeared to be a surging boily pinch with a huge ledge exiting it. It was maybe 30 feet wide with overhanging walls of maybe a couple hundred feet, & the ledge dropped anywhere from 8 to 15 feet (hard to tell), with a thin line through some boils & waves right down the gut into a huge hole. On either side of the ledge, there were "uncomfortable" consequences .. but Bryan & I both felt pretty good about the gorge & at this point, I was considering myself "all in". We radioed back to the others what we were seeing.

Bryan: The problem was what we could NOT see downstream.

Todd: So we took a long time battling vines & hiking a ridgeline perpendicular to the river, trying to gain a downstream vantage. At one point Bryan actually climbed a tree hanging off the steep canyon wall, & caught a glimpse of the gorge. Then we finally found a rocky outcropping with a semi-clear view that showed us all we were going to see: heavily vegetated dome rock from thousands of feet up formed the left wall, & a low but vertical granite wall formed the right. There would be no way out of the river for the length of what we could see if we put in upstream of the chockstone gorge. Further downstream, maybe a half mile or so, we could see that the river turned abruptly to the right & dropped into yet another deeper gorge.

Bryan: Basically, if we were to run this canyon, then we would be committing to the next. It looked like there was a possible scout at river level on the left above that canyon. The same river-left as the 2000 meter canyon wall. Zero options to get out on the right. We left the scouting mission to return back to the team and deliver the news.

Andrew: Their scout revealed several bigger but runnable rapids with a few issues, leading into the next box canyon, into which they couldn´t see.  Once they returned, we made the decision to hike out rather than drop into more walled-in gorges with the possibility of no scout/portage/escape.  Then we had lunch.  Our initial intent was to hike up a ways and make a high portage around part or all of the next canyon.

Todd: We came back down from the hike sweaty, exhausted & a bit unsure as to what our recommendation would be. The boys were on a huge rock with maps & GPS units out. The maps, of course, showed that we were supposedly in the "mellow" part of the gorge & on the cusp of some very serious stuff. I remember the discussion moving pretty quickly to a concensus of NOT dropping in, which, honestly, surprised me .. I mean, given the fact that everything that I scouted looked manageable. Piero was adamant that you don't just drop into gorge like that in Peru .. the logic being based on the fact that the canyon gets impossibly deep starting right here & that the gorged-out stretch goes anywhere from 20 to 30 uninterrupted kilometers. We were already faced with an unrunnable junkshow & the odds of at least one more thing that we wouldn't want to run being in that next 20-30 km being very high, the obvious conundrum became "how do we scout, portage, or get around at river level in this sheer-walled gorge?" .. Another factor is that the water level didn't at any point before this morning feel "high", but the added water coming in off the walls & from tribs in the last day, plus the constricted nature of the gorge, definitely made for a more "big water" style in what I scouted.

(Our proposed portage route .. straight up into the jungle .. sweet.):

Bryan:  Before we started hauling boats, Piero and I just started climbing straight up through the jungle in search of a way out.  We immediately encountred a big cliff band.  I went left and got all cliffed-out with a bunch of my gear on my back.  This started to make the whole sitaution serious to me.  I just questioned how we were going to find a decent route up what seemed like an endless mountain with the boats.  Piero luckily found a traverse to the right which Drew had scouted from river level.  Todd and Piero took off on that traverse with a machete, while Drew, Shane, and I started to rig ropes to deal with the boats.  The first mission was to haul the boats up about 60 feet with a tibloc hauling system. We then had to line the boats across the traverse that dropped straight to the river.  We strung two throw bags along the traverse and clipped a boat onto the line at booth ends and dragged it along the traverse.  At the end of the rope it took two people and some extra biners to transfer it to the next rope.  It took us 4 hours to move 5 kayaks 500 feet and we were beat.  The "Hell" part of this "Vacation" was settling in, but I was trying hard not to let it bother me.

Todd: We just kind of started straight up without much of a plan. This resulted in some inefficiency & a bit of a brief breakdown. To be fair, we had spent the last 4 days KAYAKING, not portaging or climbing out of a ridiculous canyon, so we were still in that mode I think, & we just didn't realize what we were up against. The reality & gravity of where we were at set in quick, & with Drew kind of recognizing the need for a more tactical approach, we organized a little better strategy after our first botched hour.

(Looking straight down toward what I'd just hiked up & what the boys would eventually have to haul boats up. The tree growing straight out from the canyon wall was my "anchor" while waiting for Piero to return from a route-finding mission.):

Shane:  I like to keep things moving and can let myself get frustrated and overly anxious when momentum slows, but when we hit the unrunnable drop I had this feeling we would be here awhile, so I tried to just maintain a calm patience through this zone.  As it turns out I spent alot of time at this drop since I did not go on the scouting mission and I was the last one to leave the river as I was sending boats up the rope line that Drew set up.

(The view of the river-left canyon wall on the hike up. The cliff faces across the way are several hundred feet tall.):

Todd: While those guys were hauling boats up, Piero & I went route-finding from the only "flat" spot we could find. Piero had stumbled onto what was at one time a trail, noticeable only by the faint markings & cuts into the trunks of trees along the way. The going was extremely slow, as the canyon wall was super steep & the vegetation very thick. We climbed & hacked with the machete through the jungle until the vegetation eased up. The higher we went, the more arid & open the environment became. But still, each subsequent step was steeper than the last as we switchbacked between huge aloes & cactii. I think we made it up about a thousand vertical feet to what appeared to be a saddle. Then Piero stopped abruptly & backed off, exclaiming something like "Oh my god, man!". It took me a minute to meet up with him, but when I did, my stomach ended up in my throat too. Our "trail", the second it hit the flat, fell away a thousand feet straight down to the river where an apparent landslide had ripped out side of the canyon wall. It literally went from steep climb to knife-edge to exposed rock cliff to river.

(The view from atop our "dirt cornice".):

(Looking down on the junky rapid that forced us out of the water.):

Todd: We carefully walked up the knife ridge & realized that we were looking at a pretty serious situation. The idea of portaging the gorge quickly disappeared when we realized that just getting off the knife ridge was going to be the new challenge. The point where my mood shifted was when Piero said quietly "One of you guys has insurance right?"  Me: "Yeah, a couple of us do." Him: "Well, we might need it to call in a helicopter."  "What helicopter???", I thought ... By then, it was understood that we wouldn't be bringing the boats up what we just climbed & I could tell that it killed Piero to think that he'd be leaving Damon Miller's boat in the bottom of a canyon. So we sat there admiring the twilight view for a couple more minutes & then headed back down to the camp flat with the idea in mind that we were at least a couple days out from even seeing another human.

Shane: After we had sent the last boat up and we knew the plan had changed from portage to evac, I went down to say goodbye to the Huallaga.  All of a sudden I noticed a change in the sound of the river -- the water had dropped an inch or so and returned to its original color.  Almost like another signal, as the day had started, this gave me the impression that we were making the right decision, and certain contentment came over me as I left the Rio Huallaga. 

Andrew:  Shane, Bryan, and I hauled the last boat up the first pitch and took down all the ropes just by dark.  Piero & Todd had made camp on a flat-ish area in the jungle with the machete.  Our campsite was infested with ants, but luckily they were the little friendly black variety that don't bite or sting.  This was starting to fall in the category of ¨epic misadventure¨, as it had taken us all afternoon to hike up a few hundred feet and we were still deep in the bush.  We gave up on the boats and planned to focus on getting ourselves out of there in the morning.  The next day would be my birthday, and one I won't soon forget.

(Settling into our insect-infested, flat-ish jungle camp as night approaches.):

El Rio Huallaga -- Day 3

Bryan: Piero, Drew, and I had pegged Day 3 as one of the steepest sections of the Huallaga.  The maps suggested the river would get steep and continuous before easing off some at the start of the Great Bend, around 15km downstream of camp.  We would also gain one of the most significant tributaries of the trip and the canyon becomes much deeper.  By the end of the day we would begin to see the extreme topo lines of the Great Bend that we had been so curious about for nearly a year.  We would be getting further and further away from any form of civilization and watching our potential egress from the river grow to over 2,000 meters in places.  It would be the most impressive river landscape I had ever seen.  Everyone was really fired up and I think ready to push deeper into the unknown. 

Todd: I had been hearing about "the steepest day" from the Map Crew since dinner the night before. We had already made it slowly through a major crux (Kurt's Canyon) & a couple big rapids just below that gorge. We were all hoping for some more clean class V, but personally, I was pretty anxious about what "the steepest day" had in store for us.

Shane: As Bryan mentioned, we were camped right above more Class V, and it was a true wake-up call for everyone in the morning. The crux of the drop was down low and could not really be scouted from our camp, so we all gave a quick scout of the lead in with plans to figure the rest out from a river right eddy down further.

Todd: I quickly scouted the twisty, blind, wake-up rapid as best I could, & saw at the bottom of the rapid a huge mid-stream boulder with a massive pillow/curler thing on one side, & one of those horizon lines that indicates a slot with a steep vertical ledge on the other. The slot had a fairly straightforward lead-in (once you made it through the first 2/3 of the boulder rapid), & was slightly angled such that the high right side of it looked like a nice kicker-boof .. but the whole thing appeared to be more or less backed up by the overhanging left gorge wall, which itself jutted out into the flow just downstream of the slot. From that far away, it was impossible to get a good read on the slot line & whether or not you'd get destroyed & shoved up under the wall upon landing -- too risky to consider while still digesting breakfast. With all kinds of nervous energy, I was the first in the water, with Drew following close behind.  A quick "Follow me!", & we both dropped into the chaos ..

Shane: Well, the top half proved to be more than just a mellow "lead in", as I was watermelon-seeded through one hole into a rock-splat, and Piero, following right behind me, got surfed in said hole ... better than the best morning shot of Seattle espresso!

Todd: The line I had planned (right-left-center-right-right) turned out to be different from the line I ended up actually running. I pulled into an eddy on the right amidst a bunch of really huge boulders, somewhere in the middle of the rapid, with my heart racing & Drew coming in behind me. Looking downstream at the mess of rock, pillows, holes & general chaos, I think I said something like "Sorry dude, I think I took the wrong slot & eddied us out in a bad place!" Then I saw a couple of the others careen by, each on a different line than the other.

Bryan: I had a bird´s eye view of the rapid from an eddy on river-right. I watched Shane's melon-seed-to-rock-splat. Then Piero came backwards out of the first slot and dropped sideways into the hole.  We were looking each other eye to eye.  I was safe in the eddy...he was getting worked in the hole.  Just about when Piero was free, Andrew came charging in and and stomped out the line.  I´ll never forget coming into the eddy at the bottom of the rapid that morning.  There were some wide eyes, big smiles, and it was clear that the Huallaga was starting to step up a notch.  Having looked back at the pictures that Ethan Greene had sent us, I´m pretty sure this rapid is the start of the whitewater in one of his pictures from their hike out, which puts our Night 2 camp on river-left just before the gorge.

Todd: Apart from the big wake-up call, our morning proceeded in much the same way as the previous morning, just lots of great read & run class IV & V. The map showed that we'd be soon be reaching the last real point of egress on river-left -- a spot where the main trail spurred & dropped down to the river, and also where the river would be somewhat adjacent to what appeared on the map to be some sort of pueblo.

Bryan: It was at this point that we passed what would turn out to be the only person we ever saw alongside the river.  This local must have been blown away by the crayon colored Jefe´s all bouncing one after another down through a maze of boulder gardens and pillows.   

Todd: Throughout the morning I took note of all the tiny tribs that we were picking up as we moved downstream. Every quarter mile or so, some little thing was pouring in off the cliff walls .. which I loved, not just for the additional flow, but for the fact that with every additional bit of new, clean water the nasty stuff was becoming more & more diluted! Another thing I noticed was how the canyon itself was changing character, getting much deeper & more vegetated .. & even more beautiful than the day before.

Todd: My favorite rapid of the morning has to be what we called the BC Gorge. Shane & Drew dropped into the approach rapid first, followed by Piero. They caught an eddy on the right, maybe a 100 or so yards down, & gave classic hand signals for the ledges that dropped into the mini-gorge just downstream of where they stood.

Bryan: Shane, Piero, and Drew had gotten out above this series of ledges to scout. The left river wall had gone vertical and I remember the rocks looking just like BC granite...hence the name.  Shane gave Todd and me the beta from downstream, and we dropped in.  It was a boulder garden lead-in into two distinct ledges that we were instructed to run on the right, but not too far right.  I got spun out in between the two and ran the second backwards.

Todd: The lead-in had 2 or 3 great pillow boofs .. & then the move was to just charge past where the guys had eddied-out to clear the holes of two powerful back-to-back vertical ledges. We were running it blind, & it was just fast pushy fun with big holes. Then when we hit the pool, we were totally enveloped in that classic dark gray polished granite.

Bryan: One rapid that stands out for me, was a steep mess of whitewater that I scouted on river left and then sent everyone into blind.  From the scout it looked like just a few big hits and no big deal.  Andrew and Piero drop in. Andrew cleans the line. Piero drills a rock, flips, and breaks his nose!  Then Shane and Todd drop in. Shane cleans the line. Todd drills a rock, flips, and takes a huge shot to the ribs! Fortunately no one had to follow me, because I continued the pattern and cleaned the line. If we would have had six, whoever followed me would have bounced off something and reported an injury in the eddy below!  I recall the river taking on a very diverse character starting at this rapid.

Todd: I didn't love this rapid. It was just a chaotic flushy thing, but in the first steep part of it, i buried deep in a hole & my bow went *under* a rock. I was briefly pinned underwater, then flipped, & then took a series of body blows. Oh, & I did the unthinkable -- I swallowed some Huallaga water. When I pulled into the eddy below, I was dazed & so was Piero, who had just re-aligned his broken nose. I spent the next couple minutes inducing a gag reflex with my hand down my throat, trying to purge the nasty water I had taken in.

Bryan, #5, cleaning the line on the 50% injury drop:

Bryan: Not too far below this we hit another pinch against the left wall.

Todd: This one looked a little questionable, with a couple really big holes & a bad wall pocket .. but Drew probed it & made it look easy .. so we all pretty much just followed suit.

Andrew:  We traveled over 8km that day, and got through what should be (according to the map) the steepest section.  We were not yet at the *deepest* section however.  Scouting/portaging at river level remained mostly reasonable.  So far the only thing that everyone portged was the first part of Kurt´s Canyon the previous day.  Every rapid on day 3 was successfully run, and we were working well as a team and getting into a groove.

Todd: Another (of many) memorable parts of Day 3 was the Confluence area where the big trib comes in on river-right, signifying the start of the Great Bend. This trib was a major landmark for me, on paper, & in person it was just a very powerful place, with wide open views of the HUGE mountains downstream, more densely vegetated canyon walls, & a long complicated boulder rapid created by the tributary having deposited many ginormous boulders into the Huallaga. The river seemed to take on a different character from this point -- more volume, bigger boulders, longer more complex rapids with bigger holes.

 

Todd: The big confluence rapid led directly into another long boulder rapid that was full of big holes. And that led into another big series of boulder drops ..

Shane: Day three was full of great whitewater, and much more Class five, but really only one part of the river jumps out at me specifically when I think back ... Cañon de la Paz (Canyon of Peace).  Around 2pm, our scheduled time for camp hunting, we came upon our first true Box Canyon -- totally vertical walls on both sides, with little scouting from shore and scouting from on top looking difficult to impossible.  Piero and I were out in front, and after a quick map consult - showing little gradient, that the gorge should be short and then open to good camping options - and a good gut feeling, we wanted to drop in.  Everything we could see was Class two and it just didn´t have that ominous feel of something lurking inside.  By this time in the trip I was really feeling the groove and sometimes you just hit that moment of clarity where boat scouting and probing feel easier and decisions just flow - Lars Holbeck describes this feeling excellently in his Cali guidebook. I digress. A brief pow-wow on the last possible camp above the gorge brought out some reservations to dropping in, but no one adamantly opposed, so Piero and I went down two eddies. Then Piero a third. We then waved everyone into the gut, which brought about some tense hand signals as Piero and I dropped down a couple more eddies.  We probed around one more canyon as springs started waterfalling in from river right.  One more Class two and the canyon opened up with a huge waterfall cascading into the river; it was a surreal place and feeling, and probably my favorite part of the trip.  At camp Piero came up with the name of the canyon, given the group tension that came from dropping in and the Class two nature of the gorge with tranquil waterfalls pouring in at the end. 

Todd: The whole zone at the bottom of La Paz, with the brightly lit-up jungle wall & the huge waterfall, was one of the most amazing places I've been in a kayak ..

Andrew:  Day 3 was filled with high quality whitewater and amazing scenery; at camp morale was very high.  That night I wrote down these notes: "We are deeper now.  We really don't want to have to hike out, but as it stands I don't think we'll have to.  Todd said it best when he said 'I don't want to get ahead of myself, but if the river continues like this, it might be the best river ever!'"  Famous last words.  Till tomorrow...

El Rio Huallaga -- Day 2

Todd: We were ready to put in before the sun had even dipped into the canyon. And then, within 20 minutes of launching, whatever anxiety I had about the canyon had totally dissipated. We immediately encountered fun read ´n run class IV -- the kind of ¨pick a slot, punch a hole, stomp the boof¨ stuff that gave the team the opportunity to get into a rhythm & get used to the heavy-ass boats.

(as always, CLICK on the image for full resolution image in a new window)

Andrew:  The river stepped up almost immediately and began entering steep to vertical walled gorges with mostly read & run class 4 and a few in the 5 range. We moved fairly quickly through this section; the river had constant gradient but (at this flow) a bit of a pool drop character as well.   It seems, for the most part, that the big rapids are where the walls are less vertical and more crumbly.  Scouting on the banks was mostly manageable.  The vertical walls were of more solid rock, and so far contained few serious rapids.

Bryan: We had this one super sweet rapid that required a tight cross current move through a narrow slot onto this big pillow that tractor beamed you right into a perfect 6 foot boof. The feel of the river was pretty continious and I think we all were getting adjusted to the heavy boats. For me the Jefe was feeling great loaded...like a tank ready to do battle. My mind was settling and were we were paddling a classic river.

Shane: The morning was super fun. I remember mostly fun Class IV with three specific drops that come to mind: The first class V drop we encountered that was a long and slightly complex boulder garden we named The Johns; then a squirling entrance move to a big boof over a mostly river wide hole, that Todd probed for the group; and one of the favorite drops of the group (pictured above) that had a big water entrance to boof to squirly eddy above another exit boof. Unfortunately my camera decided to take its first dive (of three) on the trip where it refused to work.

Todd: All morning long I imagined the similarities of the stuff we were running with other rivers that are well known. Sections were reminiscent of the Lower Meadow, the Rio Grande through the Taos Box, the Arkansas Numbers .. all fun stuff.

Andrew:  We ate lunch on a nice sunny rock bank, across from a tall waterfall we had previously paddled under. We had traveled 13km that morning. Shortly after lunch we came upon Kurt´s Canyon...

From Kurt´s Peru Whitewater Page: ... ¨we reached a vertical walled canyon which, after a quick river level scout, revealed unrunnable and unportagable class 6. We spent two hours fighting our way up to a pampa to scout the gorge and what we saw was a maelstrom, cascading into a vertical walled abyss.¨

Todd: I´d stared at Ethan´s photos enough to know we were there as soon we´d reached the gorge that forced the 99 team´s exit. What I saw in person was a fun class V lead-in into what could definitely be considered a short sieved-out ¨maelstrom¨. But beyond that, where the river took a turn & dropped deep into the gorge, we weren´t ready to concede it was ¨unrunnable, unportageable¨.

Drew & I volunteered for the river-left scout up to a high mesa overlooking the gorge, while Piero & Bryan agreed to cross over to a boulder jumble on river-right to see if they could see around the corner into the meat of the gorge. (Shane would work on some camera & team gear issues in the meantime.) Our river-left scout proved to be a timesuck, but necessary; a super-steep scramble up a crumbly, sketchy 500-foot pitch in the blazing sun. But once we got to the top we were rewarded with amazing views of the canyon. I was awestruck by the immense scale of the place. The river-right canyon wall was formed by the broad side of a mountain -- the top of which was well hidden -- that dropped at a uniformly steep pitch for many thousands of feet. Clearly there would be no egress on that side of the river at this point in the trip. River-left, where Kurt & Ethan´s crew hiked out, had a wide flat bench that extended downstream maybe a half-mile. There were old, rarely used footpaths snaking through the pampas grass, & another thousand or so vertical feet up the canyon wall, you could make out a bigger trail that parallels the Huallaga in this part of the canyon. Downstream, the huge forested mountains of the middle canyon loomed. I hurried to the far end of the gorge to see 2 big rapids beyond the gorge exit, also that the river opened up on river-left, offering an easy place to put-in should we decide to portage, & even a possible camp spot (since it was starting to get late). Then I worked my way back upstream along the rim of the gorge, meeting back up with Drew, where we saw a series of powerful & sievey, but manageable class V drops. Drew & I had a clear view of the bottom & middle of the gorge, as well as of Piero & Bryan on river right at the top. The second move appeared big & was mostly obscured from our view by a house-sized boulder. There appeared to be a questionable line on the far right (a slide into a sketchy pocket on the gorge wall), maybe the possibility of climbing a mid-stream pillow to a big sliding boof, & apart from that we were clueless. With our 2-way radios & plenty of hand signals, we were able to piece together enough of a strategy for Piero to feel comfortable probing the first series.

Scouting high on the left:

Scouting low on the right:

Running:

Bryan: I think this was a make or break point on this trip. We knew that Kurt had hiked out at this point and the scale of the river was growing. The walls were getting taller, the river a bit harder, and we were having to work out how to deal. While we sorted this section out, it should not go unoticed that it took close to 4 hours before we got the team through the gorge. An indication of scale and comittiment. For me it was torture. We needed to take the time to make sure we had a clear idea of what the gorge was doing at the exit which Todd´s and Drew´s scout provided. But in all the signaling and talking I basically sat above the nasty, tight, pencil sharpener entry move the whole time. For me there is nothing worse than staring down a move that you are not that stoked about for too long. From the time Piero dropped, I think it was 2 hours before I ran the drop. Everything worked out really smooth in the end. All 5 of us paddled through the gorge no problem. It solidified our ability to work well as a team, pushed us to run the less than desirable, and put us into uncharted water.

Todd: From the gorge rim, all we knew is that Piero was ready to roll. We didn´t know exactly how he intented to run that move until he came flying out from behind the huge boulder. He opted for neither the sketchy right wall line nor the climb-the-pillow-to-boof line, but for a tight slot move (Drew is pictured dropping into below), which from our vantage up top was totally hidden & therefore still a mystery until until an hour later after we´d hiked backed & got to the put-in eddy.

Piero approaching the move..

Andrew: The move was a little pencil sharpener slot between two rocks. It didn´t look great but just about everything else was a sieve. It actually ended up being a fun move, but certainly unusual. Below that, we ran out the gorge through pushy congested rapids and solid boofs.

Typical trash sighting, high on the banks:

Andrew: While putting my gear in my boat for the night (a trick I learned from Bryan, just to be extra paranoid safe that nothing can blow away, etc), I noticed what looked like a little insect hiding behind one of the straps on my pfd. It was a scorpion! Piero grabbed him by the sides of the tail (apparently they can´t sting you that way; it still seemed like playing with fire to me) and had a short tug o war, the scorpion hanging on to my pfd with his little claws, before he finally came free. Scorpions usually have friends and sure enough Piero found a second one in his boat the next morning.

Bryan: We camped a couple rapids below Kurt´s Canyon. Nothing better than camping with class 5 above you that you just stomped out, and never-before-run class 5 just below.

Revisit our call-in from Camp 2 HERE

G´night!

El Rio Huallaga - Day 1

Bryan: Day 1 began with a flurry of last minute packing and shopping. A few of us hit the market in the morning to flush out the menu and then headed back to the Hostal to divy out the rations for 7 days. The only food items we brought from North America were a few freeze dried meals, de-hydrated black beans, and split pea soup to help push the number of days of food we could carry. Pretty basic menu, but we did well. Oatmeal with coconut and raisins for breakfast, bread, cheese, salami, and sublime bars for lunch, and an assortment of pasta and quinoa based meals for dinner. A key ingredient to all meals besides breakfast in Peru is Aji. Pierro sourced out small packets just before push off. Food for seven days complete.

TG: By the time we got all our gear organized, dropped stuff off at Carlos´ house for safe keeping, & got ahold of Marlow for a ride, it was late. I mean ¨late¨given that it was like 3:30 in the afternoon & it gets dark at around 6:00. We´d kind of agreed that we´d be getting out of the river every day at around 2:00 to look for & set up camp .. & here it is, 3:30, and we don´t even have our sprayskirts on yet. Thus began our daily M.O. of ignoring our #1 rule!

Shane:  The late start really summed up the day.  As the early riser of the group, I am always anxious to get the day going, and with all the last minute to-do´s of the day, it just kept getting later and later.  This didn´t bother me so much in the sense of trying to make camp soon, and actually proved that we probably had more time than we thought with our proposed camp time.  But what affected me, was that with the late start I wasn´t mentally prepared for hard whitewater ... and luckily, we didn´t encounter any before camp.   

Bryan: Pushing the late start rule, we were once again reminded that we were in Peru after loading all the boats in the ¨truck¨.  I hopped into Marlo´s taxi behind the truck full of Jefe´s only to watch everyone jump out of the truck plus the workers of the Hostal and start pushing it down the road.  A huge cloud of smoke engulfed the Jefe´s and the truck lurched forward down the road.  15 minutes later we were pulled over on the side of the road while th driver talked some other guy into loaning him a wrench to tighten the 2 of 5 lug nuts down on the rear wheels.  Classic Peruvian vehicular episode.  All you can do is laugh and hope it gets you to where you want to go.

TG: I really wanted to put in at the Angel, but after scoping out that option, we all determined it would be too much of a pain in the ass to get to the river. So we continued on downstream a little ways to Puente El Rancho, where a crowd of locals gathered on all sides to watch the crazy, brightly colored gringos float into the unknown.

Andrew: 90 minutes and we´re already getting deep. Finding a campsite was a bit of a challenge as many of the walls are steep and the banks small.

TG: Several things struck me immediately about the Huallaga: one, the stench & litter. The water is fouled from the effluent of cities & pueblos for many miles upstream, and because there is little in the way of infrastructure to support the growing Western ¨disposable¨ consumer culture in rural Peru, plastic bags, bottles, toys, & all manner of junk was strewn about the banks & in the trees .. evidence of much higher flows through the canyon.

Shane:  Yeah, Todd and I were constantly given aromatic reminders of the Confluence whitewater park in Denver ... not a good memory.

Todd:  The second thing was the stunning natural beauty of the area. Almost immediately after putting in, we were cruising in & out of desert sheer-walled gorges (where litter didn´t collect), with constant views up- and downstream of huge mountain vistas in the distance. It was hard for my brain to reconcile the two polar-opposite aesthetics: some of the most impressive canyon scenery ever vs. the stinking water & litter-strewn trees ..

TG: After making camp, Piero surprised us with a put-in ritual that paid homage to Pachamama, the Apus (gods of the mountains around us), our fallen friends, our families, the river itself, & to the team. It really bonded us & put our mission in the proper perspective. I can´t really go into it much beyond that, but it was just the most amazing way to start the trip & something I´ll never forget.

TG: I didn´t sleep much that night. The sandy beach was comfortable enough, but the anticipation of what the morning had in store had me tossing & turning all night long. My legs were covered in super-itchy sand fly bites & a crazy electrical storm was happening somewhere high above us on the plateau. I think my brain´s subconscious diversionary tactic throughout the night was to switch back & forth between neurotic obsession with the river to fits of fevered leg-scratching to nervous freakouts about torrential downpours & flash floods ..

Keepin´it movin´...

Let´s start with a bit of backstory on the state of affairs at the time of our last real blog post, & at the time of our launch on the river. Piero had shown up via Cusco & within hours had sorted out more relevant information regarding the canyon & the pueblos surrounding it than we were able to in a week of pounding the pavement. He had locked onto a contact who works for the banks almost as a claims investigator -- the guy routinely treks deep into the Huallaga canyon on foot, & provided us with crucial information regarding possible egress on river-right once we were deep into the Great Bend. This was welcome info given that the most recent maps were 70´s vintage & didn´t accurately reflect the region´s ¨development¨.

I spent months trying to hire over-canyon surveillance of the river while still in the US. The only lead that provided results was Manuel Miranda in Lima, who found an A-Star in Ayacucho:

¨There is a company with an helicopter model AS-350-B1 , they work for mining companies and could rent it teh cost is US$1900 plus tax (peruvian tax is 19%) per each hour of flight. However, they start counting the time since the helicopter leave their base. Their base is placed in Ayacucho.

ITINERARY

AYACUCHO-SATIPO-HUANUCO:   3.4 HORAS

HUANUCO-SOBREVUELO RIO HUALLAGA TINGO MARIA-HUANUCO:    2.2 HORAS

HUANUCO-SATIPO-AYACUCHO:   3.4 HORAS

TOTAL:   9.0 HORAS

They need a confirmation one week before departure, and have available from June 10Th till 16Th¨

Given that after purchasing our airfares to Lima, we were on a total operating budget of around $6K, a $20,000 A-Star flight was a nice fantasy, but not something we wasted any time pursuing. A day before we flew out of Seattle, Kurt once again reassured me that it would be easy to find a fixed-wing flight out of Huanuco. Just roll out to el aeropuerto & ask to talk to el piloto. But as our Huaraz-based friend Jim found out months before, when we tasked him with sorting out a plane flight over the canyon, the only options out of Huanuco are, in the words of el piloto, ¨Huanuco a Lima, Lima a Huanuco.¨

Me, in my broken Espangles: ¨Pero, de repente es posible, si pagamos bastante dinero, podemos ir a Tingo primero?¨

Him: ¨Imposible! Huanuco a Lima, Lima a Huanuco. Nada mas!¨

Things have changed in Huanuco Department since Kurt was there nearly 10 yrs ago. 2 flights per week & nothing going downvalley to Tingo. To think that there are private aircraft, fixed-wing or otherwise, sitting on the ground & waiting to be hired in this very impoverished Department deep in the highlands of Peru is laughable. Huanuco Department is an area that sees no tourism. There is virtually no infrastructure to support tourism and in fact, the US State Department lists it as a no-visit zone & forbids its own employees from going there. This ain´t Whistler -- or even Cusco -- where there are aircraft for hire.

Our time in Tingo proved about as productive. We saw huge ancient Russian helis in the air & were hopeful that with the right story & the right amount of cash, we could get a lift. After asking around town, Bryan & I went to both the airport & to the Dirandro (the cops), and were shut down. The big old helis are flown in & out of Tingo, up the Monzon & out to Pucalpa & other spots in la selva, as part of Alan´s coca eradication policy. We were not equipped with the language skills, or perhaps even more importantly, culturally, to deal with the delicate negotiations needed to derail a Federal antidrogas mission for a fun fact-finding flight up the Huallaga. Piero thinks that it may be possible for the right person to do just that, but it would take time & budget resources that are way out of what we have available to us.

Given that an on-foot scout of 50 to 80 Kms of jungle gorge is out of the question & would prove to be impossible anyway (same goes for ¨ground support¨ -- What´s a dude with a couple burros gonna do for you when you´re at the bottom of a 300-ft box canyon that´s 2,000 steep meters below where he´s hanging out on a trail?) .. So instead we focused on making a self-supported, blind drop-in in an incredibly deep and wild canyon as ¨safe¨ as possible. Kurt & Ethan´s crew made it down a little way into the canyon -- we were sure that we´d make it that far.  And having seen tons of photos from downstream of that point that our Lima-based friend Rupert sent us, we were fairly certain that we could make it at least to the start of the Great Bend. Beyond that was pure uncertainty that would have to be dealt with at the time that we arrived there.

Bryan, Andrew & Piero spent hours with the maps & 2 GPS units, charting gradients, plotting waypoints that correlated with potential escape routes (which were in turn correlated to pueblos & trails high along the canyon walls), planning camp spots, etc. We all sorted through our gear, isolating what was absolutely necessary & jettisoning what would be luxury. Lots of food would be the call, as we were guessing that the trip could take anywhere from 4 to 10 days .. even with a walk out.

With our preparations in order & after having obsessed over this unknown canyon for nearly a full year, we were all overcome with that heavy feeling of giddy, anxious resignation that you get when you´ve come to terms with the fact that you´re about to do something really stupid.

This was our mindset at 3:00 pm -- a full hour past our planned daily take-out time -- as we rode in Marlow´s car, rocking out to Michael Bolton, on the way to our put-in at Puente El Rancho.

The photos below are just a wee taste of what we found during our mission down el Huallaga (click for full size).

Camp 1:



Scouting Kurt´s Canyon:

Running Kurt´s Canyon:







Hiking out:

Looking back upstream at the section we ran:

The full story & tons of photos will be posted after we get back from a 7-day trip on the Apurimac .. see you then .. we´re going kayaking!

All is good...

The Range Life are back, safe and happy. Big props to TRL. From here on out the blog will be turned over to them. Pictures and stories coming.

Listen Here 

IR Vacation To Hell...silence

Sorry we have nothing to report. Hopefully we will hear something soon.

IR Vacation To Hell...too much for The Range Life

OK, I got about six minutes of question and answer with Todd. They are on the hike out fully in the middle of nowhere. It sounds like the river was super committing, deep and dark. Listen to the podcast and decide for yourself. We will have more tomorrow as they have no idea how long it is going to take them to hike out.

Listen Here 

...we have reached the unscoutable, unportageable, unrunnable...IR Vacation To Hell

We got this message last night from TRL and it seems they have reached an unscoutable, unportageable, unrunnable section of the Rio Huallaga. We don't know much more than that. The team is at least three days from any form of civilization deep in the Andes. Anxiously looking forward to a call tomorrow. Have a listen to the message below.

Listen Here